Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights

Law and Policy Perspectives

Dimitra Manou, Andrew Baldwin, Dug Cubie, Anja Mihr, Teresa Thorp, Dimitra Manou, Andrew Baldwin, Dug Cubie, Anja Mihr, Teresa Thorp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367136161
• eBook ISBN: 9781317222330
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Climate Change already having serious impacts on the lives of millions of people across the world. These impacts are not only ecological, but also social, economic and legal. Among the most significant of such impacts is climate change-induced migration. The implications of this on human rights raise pressing questions, which require serious scholarly reflection.

Drawing together experts in this field, Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights offers a fresh perspective on human rights law and policy issues in the climate change regime by examining the interrelationships between various aspects of human rights, climate change and migration. Three key themes are explored: understanding the concepts of human dignity, human rights and human security; the theoretical nexus between human rights, climate change and migration or displacement; and the practical implications and challenges for lawyers and policy-makers of protecting human dignity in the face of climate change and displacement. The book also includes a series of case studies from Alaska, Bangladesh, Kenya and the Pacific islands which aim to improve our understanding of the theoretical and practical implications of climate change for human rights and migration.

This book will be of great interest to scholars of environmental law and policy, human rights law, climate change, and migration and refugee studies.

Part I

Introduction

1 Climate change, migration and human rights

Dimitra Manou¹ and Anja Mihr²

Global warming and environmental change are already having serious impacts on the lives of millions of people all across the world. Changes to our climatic system, such as floods, droughts, rising sea levels, glacial melting, deserts shrinking or expanding, and rainfall patterns changing, to name but a few, impose huge stresses on livelihoods. Scientists raise their voices to warn that parts of the world may become completely uninhabitable not only due to severe environmental degradation but due to climate change as well. Consequently, the impacts on livelihoods are not only ecological but also social, economic and legal. Overall, they are man- and woman-made and, thus, the anticipated global and local solution to decrease the negative impact of climate change on our livelihoods will depend on how men and women agree legally and politically binding agreements, and develop instruments, mechanisms and procedures to safeguard and protect human rights standards for climate change-affected people.

The potential climate change-induced migration of millions of people is currently one of the most disputed impacts of climate change and is increasingly becoming an issue of great concern for governments and policy makers. Whether as so-called ‘climate refugees’, ‘economic migrants’ or ‘displaced people’, climate change-induced migration has many faces. Climate change affects everyone in the world in different ways. For example, disputes over scarce natural resources such as water or fertile ground can cause violent conflicts; droughts can cause displacement and prompt people to seek refuge; and the seepage of cliffs and fertile grounds and the flooding of coastal areas force or encourage people to move and migrate. Some do so through legal channels, but many more do so outwith a specific legal framework. Human rights and the concept of climate justice aim to fill the legal and political gap for millions of migrants who do not benefit from international legal protection as the cause of their migration is not yet fully enshrined in either international or regional law.

However, both migrants and those who decide to remain in environmentally degraded areas face a range of humanitarian challenges and the potential deprivation of basic human rights, such as the rights to health, property and adequate housing. Despite extensive discussions and analysis of international and internal human mobility, the issue of protecting the rights of people who decide to stay and those who are left behind has not been sufficiently analysed in the academic literature. This is where this volume aims to make a difference. Our prime concern in this book is that the implications of climate change-induced migration affect or violate basic international human rights norms and standards and thus raise pressing questions requiring serious scholarly reflection about both those who move and those who stay. Such civil, political, social, economic and cultural human rights include the right for all to live a dignified life, the right to self-determination and participation of those most affected, the right to livelihoods thay are threatened when livestock and farms vanish or are destroyed, the right to adequate housing and the right to seek education and professional development if one is forced to migrate.

Furthermore, climate change-induced migration interacts in complex ways with human rights protection. People’s ability to enjoy their rights is severely affected by climate change, which has been recognised by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as one of the greatest human rights challenges of our generation.³ Citizens not only lose assets, but rights. Discrimination in gender and ethnic relations may be triggered by climate change-induced migration. Economic and social balance/relations are also affected, leading to new patterns of inequality. All these diverse challenges create increased pressure on human rights. In fact, all human rights may be undermined as a result of the impacts of climate change.

That being said, human rights, as universally accepted in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can offer a normative direction for addressing climate change-induced migration. As advocated by the Mary Robinson Foundation, incorporating human rights considerations into climate policies can contribute to achieving actions that benefit both the needs of people and the planet.⁴ Throughout this book, a distinction will be made regarding the status of the people who are moving: internal migration within the borders of a state gives rise to internally displaced persons who are entitled to enjoy the full range of their human rights (as recognised by both international and domestic law) in that state; while international, cross-border migrants often face a serious protection gap, which is highlighted and explored throughout the book’s chapters. For both categories of migrant, it is a necessity for states of origin, transit and/or destination to design, adopt and enforce effective policies, strategies and legislative solutions at the national level.

Development of new, more effective governance mechanisms requires a deep knowledge of existing climate- and migration-related policies and a solid understanding of the reasons why such policies may lead to more inequalities instead of mitigating them. In light of the pitfalls that accompany climate change-induced migration, the human rights-based approach provides a strong conceptual and practical framework to protect human rights in the context of climate change.

Over the past twenty years, proposals have been advanced for new legal frameworks, such as a new international convention to protect climate-displaced persons or amendments to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Yet we remain without a clear, internationally binding framework for many people who migrate due to the negative impacts of climate change. The widely endorsed 2015 Paris Agreement at the UNFCCC COP21 meeting may serve as an example of how complicated and difficult it is to include relevant clauses on population movement arising from climate change in international agreements.⁵

In 2016 in Marrakech, COP22 confirmed the goals and plans of COP21 in Paris. The COP22 Agreement identifies not only states’ responsibilities, in particular the joint efforts of Global North and Global South nations, but also those of NGOs, CSOs and businesses. Marrakech focused on initiatives to reinforce existing plans, with some countries promising to review their 2020 targets. Timelines and roadmaps for reviewing states’ and stakeholders’ achievements were agreed. Primarily, however, the meeting secured a commitment to implementation and answered at least some technical questions. Subsequent annual meetings will reinforce the agreements and also assess, evaluate and if necessary penalise and apply pressure to those countries that do not comply.

Clearly, identifying environmental or climate migrants has not been an easy task. Therefore, it seems unlikely that proposals on population movement arising from climate change will gain the necessary political support in the near future with regard to drafting, amending, endorsing or adopting an entirely new legal framework. On the other hand, at the national level, there have been governmental and civil society efforts to respond to legal, policy and administrative gaps with regard to climate migration, as is demonstrated in the case studies within this book.

The suffering of many people in the so-called Global South who face the worst of climate change’s impacts, such as inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, Bangladesh, Chile, Kenya, Sudan and many other sub-Saharan countries, has led to large-scale cross-border movements and internal displacements. However, it is now clear that the impacts of climate change are of concern not only for people in the South (who have contributed least to the root causes of climate change) but for the North as well, such as Europe, North America, China and Japan, where climate change-induced floods, hurricanes and other natural forces have led to displacement and resettlement of thousands of people and industries. As a result, injustice, adaptation and mitigation strategies, as well as reallocation decisions (individual or community), have evolved to become concerns across the globe. Thus, new challenges have arisen for national, regional and international agencies, including UN bodies, the African Union, the European Union and the Organization of American States, resulting in a need for appropriate programmes and initiatives to reduce and minimise people’s vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate change and forced displacement.

Decision-making processes and the design and adoption of new policies and laws have been difficult in the contexts of global climate change and especially climate change-induced migration. Aside from the lack of an appropriate legal framework (at the national, regional or international level), uncertainty about the precise numbers of people who will eventually move and about the forms that this human movement will take put much more pressure on policy makers, international and regional agencies, and national and local authorities. The development of new legal and policy frameworks, which may address the harmful impacts of climate change as associated migration and human rights violations, still seems a long way ahead. New ways of thinking are necessary for the international community to support those most in need, recognising that the main goal remains helping existing (and future) victims of climate change by offering them adequate legal and policy tools to support their adaptation and mitigation activities. Adaptation mechanisms must therefore be created and enhanced, including supporting migration away from climate change-affected areas or providing support to those who are unable or unwilling to leave their homes.

Therefore, this book addresses issues such as:

• What theoretical frameworks will help us to understand the links between human rights, climate change and migration?

• Is the current legal framework for human rights protection adequate to address climate change-induced migration?

• Is a human rights-based approach the most appropriate method for responding to climate change-induced migration?

• What other responses might there be?

• And what lessons may be learned from countries or regions that are already obliged to address the issue of displacement due to environmental and climatic stressors?

This edited volume aims to respond to some of these pressing questions and has thus encouraged interdisciplinary approaches between social, legal and political scientists to offer a fresh look at the interlinkages between climate change, migration and human rights. The nexus between human rights, climate change and migration policy has been explored and analysed. This volume has also encouraged transnational approaches, highlighting the differences and/or commonalities of people on the move. Issues covered by the chapters include, inter alia, planned relocation, questions of asylum, humanitarian policies, climate justice and adaptation strategies. Questions of implementing human rights standards in existing and emerging policies and governance mechanisms (i.e. for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction) and their relation to migration strategies have been also explored.

This book arose from the EU’s COST Action programme IS1101: ‘Climate Change and Migration: Knowledge; Law and Policy, and Theory’, and in particular from the Working Group II on ‘Law and Policy’, which met on four occasions between 2012 and 2015. All of the contributors have been members of – or have worked closely with – this COST Action to establish a network of researchers in this field, with the aim of sharing their knowledge and building upon and extending research on the legal and policy perspectives of climate change-induced migration.

The adequacy of existing legal and policy frameworks, and how they may apply to people on the move due to climate change, raises fundamental questions for policy makers and practitioners (Ferris, Thorp), as does the possibility of designing and adopting new legal frameworks that could respond to human rights and climate-induced displacement. Discussions on international legal frameworks under the European and international law regimes with regard to climate change and migration highlight the fact that soft law initiatives may play a crucial role in addressing climate change-induced migration, such as the development of guidelines to meet the needs of specific groups affected by climate change (Ferris). If existing frameworks prove inadequate for this purpose, there may be a need to modify the existing – or develop new – legal architecture to govern the rights of migrant populations displaced due to climate change, including the international and regional legal frameworks for international climate change, sustainable development and disaster risk reduction measures (Thorp).

The challenges of identifying a satisfactory legal definition of environmental or climate migrants (or refugees) seem insurmountable, due to the difficulties of isolating the causal links of environmental factors as the sole cause for migration (Mayer). Nevertheless, climate change and human rights are strongly interlinked and the concept of climate justice may offer a way to conceptualise these links (Mihr).

The necessity to ensure protection and respect of housing, land and property rights of climate change-displaced persons is underlined in the case study of Bangladesh, one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change, where thousands of people have been displaced internally (Simperingham). Individuals in environmentally stressed areas are faced with three stark choices: forced migration, pre-emptive migration or in-situ adaptation (Cubie). Therefore, the issue of non-migration as a coping strategy in response to climate change also needs to be addressed. Adapting or migrating with dignity should be promoted through the application of key procedural rights, such as the right to information and the right to participate (Cubie). The potential links between climate change and the social impact of migration with armed conflicts are clearly highlighted (Olsson).

The importance of policy strategies at the international and domestic level for the reallocation of resources is exemplified through case studies from Alaska and Kenya (Bronen, Schade), as well as suggestions for climate change adaptation policies (Cubie). While relocation appears to be the only durable solution to protect the inhabitants of many vulnerable communities, tribal, state and national government agencies are struggling to respond in Alaska (Bronen). In addition, environmental change, climate policies and land regulations may lead to additional disadvantages for already vulnerable groups and prevent them from enjoying basic human rights to water, food and housing (Schade).

The methods whereby rights and resources are negotiated in transnational law-making processes through informal actors and forums is highlighted, offering another view on global law-making processes which localises respective negotiations on innovative migration strategies and new rights in the Global South (Klepp and Herbeck).

A human rights lens is essential when thinking about the injustices caused by climate change, and that the threat to human rights may also come from less acknowledged factors, like the dynamics of the political economy, which may affect people’s ability to resist or overcome these threats (Ackerly et al.). Finally, existing avenues and tools to facilitate mobility are explored, in particular the option to consider labour mobility as an adaptation strategy to environmental change (Fornalé).

The dialogue that is presented here will hopefully generate new synergies and understanding between social scientists, legal scholars and policy makers as well as new opportunities for stronger and more effective responses to these interlinked global agendas: climate change, migration and human rights. Thus, this book offers state-of-the-art legal and policy research on climate change-induced migration and human rights as a means of adding to the international policy dialogue and to serve as a basis for expanding research capacity in the field of climate change and migration. It also provides useful guidance to legal practitioners and policy makers working at the cutting edge of the subject.

Notes

1 Senior Researcher, School of Law, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

2 Programme Director, Humboldt–Viadrina Center on Governance through Human Rights, Berlin, Germany.

3 United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), ‘Human Rights and the Environment: Our Generation Must Meet the Great Challenge – UN Experts’ press release (5 June 2015) www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16052&LangID=E accessed 21 October 2016.

4 Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, ‘Incorporating Human Rights into Climate Action’, Version (1 October 2014) www.mrfcj.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2014-10-20-Incorporating-Human-Rights-into-...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• PART I: Introduction
• PART II: The theoretical nexus
• PART III: Legal and policy approaches
• PART IV: Case studies
• PART V: Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index